“Go if you want to,” consented Dick Carroll, who with a partner completed the squad here. “See as much as you can, while you have a chance. But you’d better do some tall crawling and keep your heads down.”
Away they scurried. A hole had been hacked in the ceiling, and furniture piled under; and boosted by this they wormed up through to the roof.
The roof was of flattened clay, and surrounded by a cement rim about three feet high, like a parapet. Men were lying on their stomachs behind the parapet, resting their guns on it, aiming, firing and lowering their pieces to reload. Henry Karnes was here—cautiously raising his red head to sight along his rifle barrel, and at the smart recoil of his piece ducking down and hastily reloading.
“You’d best get down out of hyar,” he snarled, to the boys, as they squirmed beside him. “It’s hotter’n a brass kettle at a dog feast!”
And that was true. Bullets from Mexican soldiery were droning close above, like a swarm of angry bees. They were thudding upon the stones, and knocking chips from the top of the parapet.
“I’m up here to see something,” blurted Jim, obstinately, wriggling so as to get a view. He carefully lifted his head, until he could peep over a low place. Not to be outdone, Ernest found another place, where a bullet had scored a furrow.
The air was blue with the fumes of cannon and musket and rifle discharge. Immediately before the parapet was a narrow street, separating the de la Garza house from another smaller house. But that roof had been cleared of Mexicans, had any occupied it. Further, was the church tower, rising beyond the row of buildings facing the plazas; the sun burst through the mists, and shone full on the red flag of “No quarter.” Across the street to the left were the Johnson sharpshooters, poking their rifle barrels over the parapet of the Veramendi roof. The Veramendi house was a short distance nearer to the main plaza than was the de la Garza house. From the roofs of the houses right and left and before, on toward the plaza, belched the smoke from the volleys of the Mexicans.
Crawling on their stomachs, over the legs of the men so as to keep under the parapet, the boys made a half circuit of the roof. At one spot they looked down into the court, where amidst flowers and fruits a fountain played and where birds were twittering and fluttering, while along the wall that completed the enclosure the riflemen were at work, shooting at Mexican gunners.
“When this war’s over and Texas is free, and I grow up and get a wife, and crops are good,” mused Jim, “I reckon I’ll have a patio just like this to sit in, nights and Sundays.”
“I’ll have one, too, and put my mother in it, I guess,” hazarded Ernest.